Accordingly, she said, “It must be longer for you, monsieur.” And rising, she walked across the room to distract him.
Chapter Five
Noir found little progress in the cellar. Judging by the length of the place, there was still space unaccounted for beneath the main house. There was just no way into it, not from here or from anywhere else in the inn. No other stairs leading down, and he’d opened every damned cupboard to check, tapped all over every wall in the building.
“Captain, we should be gone,” Lefevre said wearily as Noir weaved through the barrels and crates which had been hauled away from the walls. “If you’re right and the innkeeper has summoned the soldiers, they could be on us any minute.”
Noir kicked the nearest barrel, glowering. “Yes, but if I’m right, then our men are still here. We can’t leave them.”
“If they’re here,” Caron said, throwing his pick on the cellar floor, “why don’t they answer us when we call? Why don’t we hear them?”
“I don’t know,” Noir said moodily. “Perhaps they don’t hear us. Damnation, I know they’re here.” He scowled at his men. “One more hour, and then we must admit defeat. The alternative would be giving the British extra prisoners, namely ourselves.” None of them would thrive in a prison. He himself would go insane without distraction. But he knew the prisoners were here.
He was aware his men thought he was being unreasonably stubborn. If they weren’t men he knew, men he had brought safely out of several other scrapes, they might have defied him and mutinied. But he hadn’t forgotten his duty to them.
“Keep looking. I’m going to check the kitchen floor again. We’ve been ignoring it since it has the entrance to this cellar, but there could be another trapdoor, a secret room below the floor.” He hurried back to the stairs, adding over his shoulder, “But you’re right about our time here running out. I’ll make sure it’s quiet outside.”
Running upstairs to the kitchen, he barely spared it a glance before he unlocked the kitchen door and stepped outside. A figure swung on him out of the darkness, growling deep in his throat like a dog.
“Dupont,” Noir said quietly. “All quiet?”
“Nothing stirring, sir. I’d almost rather a fight.”
“Let’s hope your wish isn’t granted. Keep your ears open.” With that, he walked away, beginning a systematic patrol of the inn’s environs.
He had good vision at night, and despite the new moon, there was light enough from the sky to make out the path down the cliff to the beach where they had landed. Smugglers had brought them ashore, but they were on their own getting back to the ship. No one lurked below on the beach or on the rocks that he could make out. He just hoped their boat was where they had left it, close into the cliff.
He walked on, hearing and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. If there were soldiers approaching, they were doing so ridiculously quiet. He moved closer to the inn to do another, smaller circle of the building. The light from the coffee room at the front was very faint, showing through a gap in the curtain he hadn’t properly closed, or Boucher had made larger by sitting in the window seat. Noir could see his broad back, shifting as it always did when he talked.
Who the devil was he talking to?
Isabelle de Renarde. He saw the curve of her arm, even a glimpse of her golden hair, and she leaned forward, listening to Boucher.
What on earth were they talking about?
Ridiculous to be jealous of Boucher. She was an aristocrat, he a child of the revolution. She was the mistress of the unspeakable, undeserving Ashton. A beautiful face and seductive figure were not usually enough to distract him. But she was more. The widow of a traitor, she seemed resigned to the mistrust of her chosen countrymen. And she was deeply unhappy. Grief and loneliness were emotions he could recognize in anyone, for he knew them only too well. But she didn’t wear them on her sleeve. He admired her spirit of pride, endurance, and independence. And in earthier matters, he liked the firm, gentle touch of her fingers when she had dressed his wound—which throbbed now that he thought of it.
She smelled divine, too. His arms had ached to close around her fragile, willowy body. He wondered how she would kiss…
Oh, no, this distraction is becoming too strong. Concentrate on your task, imbecile, and get your men away from here.
By this time, he had passed the front door and met Dupont going the other way. They nodded to each other, and Noir returned to the kitchen still wondering what on earth Isabelle and Boucher were talking about.
*
In fact, they were talking about Noir.
It hadn’t started off that way. She’d given him a cup of lukewarm tea, commented on a couple of nasty grazes on his hand, and Boucher had talked about soldiers fighting through injuries, so barely noticing a scratch like his.
“Your captain has a sword wound in his arm from fighting Lieutenant Steele,” she observed. “Will that not slow him down if the British soldiers come for you?”
Boucher grinned ferociously. “No. They might get us with sheer numbers, but even then, the captain has a way of getting us out of impossible situations.”
“How?” she asked, mostly to keep him talking, to make him comfortable so that he would not notice she was gradually blocking his view of the room. But she was also intrigued and wanted to know.
“Well, there was the time we infiltrated a Spanish-held fort and laid explosives before we were surrounded, and it seemed we had no option but to surrender. But the captain blew it up anyway, with us in it, and in the confusion, every one of us got out and away. Even him. The explosion threw him several yards, but he still flew after us as black as my hat with half his hair singed off.”
“But that must have been sheer luck!”
“I thought so, though he claimed he knew from the amount and position of the explosives that our chances were good. Still, that’s when they started calling him mad.”
“Is he?”
Boucher considered, which was not comforting. “Not mad. Nor even reckless by his own standards. Once, he got us out by letting himself be captured. And then, while the enemy was looking for the rest of us, he overcame his guards and got to us in the nick of time.”
“And is that what you do all the time? Crazy raids like this one?”
“Mostly,” he admitted. “These days. Would have gone to Russia with the emperor, only Captain le Noir asked for me. He was too injured to go at the time, but they were already planning another incursion into a rebel state in Germany.”
“Why do you do it?” she asked curiously. “Why does he do it?”
Boucher shrugged. “Orders. I suppose it’s more fun than long marches, longer periods sitting on your backside—begging your pardon, madame—and the slog of a pitched battle. What have we got to lose?”
“Forlorn hope,” she murmured, remembering to shift her chair just a little closer and hold his gaze.
“Beg your pardon?”
“That’s what the British call their volunteers for tasks they’re unlikely to survive.”
Boucher smiled, just a little fiercely. “There you are then. The captain only leads forlorn hopes.”
“Why?”
“He never says. I do know he lost his wife and baby son a couple of years ago. I never knew him before that, so I can’t say what he was like then.” Boucher’s eyes glazed over.
Isabelle sensed movement behind her. More than one person was shifting, quietly, gently. She was sure Boucher would notice, but he was tired and lost in the past, in the comfort of speaking French.
“I saw him once, throw himself over a grenade in a Spanish village. It should have gone off, but it didn’t. I don’t know why. But just for a moment, I saw his face when he realized it wasn’t going to explode. It wasn’t relief, or joy, or even astonishment. It was anger.”
Isabelle frowned, too startled by this revelation to notice that she’d lost his gaze.
“Here, where are you going?” he demanded, his fingers tightening on
the pistol he’d been holding casually across his arm. He leapt to his feet, so Isabelle jumped up, too, bumping into him as the last of the room’s occupants bolted into the hall.
He swore at her, shoving her aside as he shot across the room. The shouts of triumph, the draught of icy air, told her the front door was open. Rushing after him, she saw him plough his way through the people at the door.
But that was wrong. They should have been outside by now and running. Someone must have stopped them, another soldier. They’d left one outside, and bad luck had brought him to the wrong place at the wrong time.
And all the soldiers would be running to help their fellows, to restrain their captives once more.
But there was another door.
All they needed was one person free to raise the alarm.
Isabelle turned and ran through the empty kitchen, which was still lit by several lamps. The door to the cellar stairs was wide open as though the men in there had rushed up already to help. And when she lifted the latch of the back door, luck was with her. It opened easily. Someone had forgotten to relock it.
Outside, in the sharp cold of the night, she ran away from the inn, heading for the Finsborough road, where there were cottages just around the next bend.
To her relief, there were no gunshots from the front of the inn. Even the excited shouting had stopped, as though everyone was recaptured with depressing ease. It was little comfort to know that she’d been right, that the Frenchmen were reluctant to shoot. Especially when she became aware it was no longer just her own panting breath, her own pounding footsteps echoing in her ears.
Someone was chasing her and catching up, fast.
She had no time to turn to find out who it was. If she could even see in the dark. In despair, she knew she would never reach the first bend. She tripped over an unseen stone or tree root, but managed to stagger onward with an undignified lurch. Hearing a furious curse behind her, she knew her pursuer had been caught the same way.
Perhaps there was hope after all… Even if she could only scream, it might raise the alarm.
And then something crashed into her back, and she fell forward onto the hard ground.
“Dash it, woman, you run like a hare,” Noir panted in her ear.
His full weight was not upon her, but he had both her hands behind her back, and both the intimacy and the indignity outraged her. She did not even have breath to scream.
“Damn you,” she gasped as he moved, hauling her to her feet.
“Are you hurt?” he asked curtly.
“No.”
“Take a moment to think about it, and then answer. I’m sorry I knocked you down. I thought you were going to scream.”
“I was,” she said shakily. She took a breath. “For the rest, I expect I am bumped and bruised, but I am not seriously hurt. The others?”
He began to walk, dragging her with him at a fast pace, his hand still gripping both of hers at the base of her spine. “They barely got out the door.”
“You will not hurt them, will you?” she said anxiously. “It was my idea.”
“I have no time to hurt them,” he retorted.
She stared at his profile, which seemed serious, even grim, though that might just have been the darkness. “It will be light soon,” she observed. “Why are you still here? You must know the men you seek aren’t at the inn.”
“I don’t know that,” he disputed. “In fact, I’m sure they are.”
She was silent a moment. “Why did you come in the first place?”
“Why did you?” he countered.
“I don’t know now,” she said candidly. “A moment of weakness, of longing for something that was never there.”
He looked at her then, but it was her turn to look straight ahead. “You will throw him over?”
“I can’t throw over what I never had,” she snapped. “He is not my lover.”
To her surprise, Noir grinned with clear delight.
“It needn’t make you so happy,” she muttered.
“True,” he allowed. “It’s none of my business. But I hate to think of you with such a man. What was your husband like?”
She stared at him. “A treacherous bastard. What was your wife like?”
He flinched as though she’d struck him. Yet his grip remained firm on her hands. “So that is what you induced Boucher to talk about. Why?”
“Curiosity. And you haven’t answered me.”
“She was young and sweet and full of laughter, a perfect antidote for war and cynicism.”
“Then perhaps you are the lucky one, and you should stop trying to get yourself killed. Sooner or later, you’ll misjudge and your men will die, too.”
His gaze remained on her face, though she couldn’t make out his expression. They were less than a hundred yards from the inn, and she doubted he would respond. But again, he surprised her. “The aim is never death.”
The glow from the building flickered across his lean, unquiet face.
“Then what is?” she asked, almost in despair.
“Distraction,” he replied. “I estimate the odds, calculate our ever-changing escape possibilities—in between the action, which is usually more exciting than hunting for elusive, secret rooms.”
She blinked. There was no point in asking, Distraction from what? “I’m sorry we couldn’t provide more entertainment.”
“Don’t be. You are, you must know, the biggest distraction of all.”
She eyed him warily. “Is that a compliment?”
“Not when you also distract Boucher, a far more deliberate distract—” Abruptly, he broke off, staring at her, though she doubted he was seeing her. “The taproom,” he said inexplicably.
He released one of her hands, dragging her forward by the other as he all but ran into the inn, slamming and locking the door behind him. “Boucher!” he yelled. “Lefevre! The taproom! Bring the innkeeper!”
“What in the world…” she began, both baffled and amused. Neither were emotions she had imagined would come with her recapture.
“And the axe!” Noir yelled, more worryingly.
Since no one told her not to, she followed Noir into the taproom. He walked around it, stamping on various areas of floor. It was almost funny, except for the serious, focused look on his face.
Caron entered the room, saying, “We’ve got everyone back and the extra keys.”
Noir barely acknowledged it. “How carefully did you search in here?”
“Not very, I suppose. We dug up a couple of floorboards,” he added as one snapped up under Noir’s stamping foot. “There was nothing. Checked the cupboards.”
By then, Boucher had appeared with a large axe in one hand, Mr. Villin in the other. The innkeeper looked bemused.
“Sit here, Mr. Villin,” Noir said, almost jovially, placing a wooden chair for him in the middle of the room.
Villin sat without fuss, blinking up at his captor. The other captives began to squeeze in behind Boucher, Lefevre and his pistol behind them. Noir was not so focused that he didn’t cast them more than a quick glance, counting them, Isabelle was sure.
“Mr. Villin,” Noir said, taking the axe from Boucher, “I know your secret room is accessed from here.”
“I don’t see how you can know anything so nonsensical,” Villin replied with dignity.
“If there’s no access from the main cellar, it makes sense for it to be close to where you serve the illicit brandy. And then, you were quite eager to keep fetching people brandy. I think your secret room is also a way out, and you planned to use it to escape and raise the alarm.”
Villin scratched his head. “I wish I’d thought of it. I’d have built one special.”
“Oh, I think you did. You or your predecessors.” He began to walk, bumping the axe head on the floor as he went. “And you’re going to tell me where it is. Am I close yet?” He hit the axe handle against the front wall, under the window.
Villin watched him with the same wide-eyed astonishment as
he walked around the room, occasionally crossing the floor toward him. All the time, Noir watched Villin’s face rather than where he was going or what he was doing. More than once, someone had to get out of his way, and twice he walked into a table, but nothing deflected him, even when he went behind the counter and tapped the inner wall with his axe a couple of times. Moving back, he bumped into the counter and paused.
“Now, I’m close,” he said softly.
“Close to the brandy,” Villin agreed.
For some reason, although this whole pantomime seemed an exercise in futility, Isabelle found she was holding her breath.
Noir walked back the way he had come, still watching Villin’s face. At the end of the counter, he turned and walked the entire length of it, almost rhythmically tapping the axe against the internal wall as he went.
“No,” he murmured. “Not quite.” Coming around the counter, he walked in front of Villin, tapping his axe on the floor. Just past him, he halted and lifted the axe. Instead of dropping it on the floor, he swung it casually sideways so it bumped against the counter, as if by accident. “Here.”
With that, he turned, swung the axe in earnest, and hacked into the counter. And a door in it swung open. Gasping, Isabelle hurried forward to see…more wood.
“I blocked it up,” Villin said. “Too many ruffians knew where it was. Wasn’t safe for my family to have it there anymore. Nor for my guests. Can’t be used at all now.”
“Maybe,” Noir said, dropping to a crouch. Laying down the axe, he felt around the wood and heaved. It came away easily in his hand in one, large plank. In fact, it looked as if it had once been a taproom table. “Light,” he commanded.
Hastily, Caron jumped up and brought the lamp. And by its glow, Isabelle saw a small chamber some three feet below the level of the floor. In it, sat four men, bound and gagged, eyes blinking madly in the sudden light.
Chapter Six
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sir Maurice murmured, clearly amused.
“My God,” Caron said in an awed voice, “he was right. I should have known he was right.”
The Broken Heart Page 5